[ Nishitani watches her, that edge of a predator back in. The mouse has teeth, it seems, and is bold enough to bite. He hisses out a breath, the smoke pluming between them. What she asks isn't small, and Nishitani isn't the kind of shithead punk that backs down from his word once given. Nishitani is many things: evil, scum, gangster-- but what qualities go unsaid are what are important here: his loyalty, his resolute nature. ]

[ The mouse bites, but Nishitani doesn't relent. Not yet. ] Then you know he's already hurt and bleeding out. [ There's a fire in Nishitani, hot, burning him alive when he thinks of that scared, choked man just from earlier this morning. It burns for Majima, and it will burn anyone who hurt him. ] He can barely speak about his shitty fucking past without freezing up like a deer about to be hit.

I want those bastards who hurt him fucking dead, I want their guts strung up where I've had them fucking quartered. Anyone who hurts him, anyone who plays their fucking games with him, they'll be right up there alongside them.

The boy he is right now is chained to some bastards who didn't know what to do with promise. I want him out, Emily-chan. The him you know might change doing just that. Would you consider that hurting? Or liberating, even if he might not be the man you knew once free?

I'll never hurt Majima. You can kill me if I do. But letting him grow will be painful, and that's not on me.